Archive Page 2
The School of Hard Copy
It’s over.
Finally finished the LAD project and sent it off to the client. James, the marketing manager has asked me for a meeting next friday afternoon to discuss it. he didn’t seem to pleased over the phone…look ok…it was nearly 2 months late but i had a number of unexpected technical problems. well, like tiina for one.
haven’t heard from her and i’m not going to contact her. pekka on the other hand phoned me this morning at 7am. pekka — if your reading this — we’re 2 hours behind helsinki not 2 hours ahead. luckily my insomnia’s back so he didn’t wake me. i wake up when it gets light now, around 5am.
anyway, pekka and i are best of friends suddenly. you, sorry i mean, he has said sorry for posting that comment on my blog and asked me to take it down. i told him what happened on friday and he said the most profound thing: “women, can’t live with them, can’t live without them.” When I asked him where he got such marvellous wisdom from he said ” Animal House…great movie, i’ve seen it 27 times”.
I never have. it came out before i was born. but i don’t say that because it’ll just make him feel even more older and wiser.
to make it up to me (what?) pekka is going to send me a book that will tell me all about women. i tell him i don’t read books, can’t he send me the dvd. he says, “what you never learned to read in the school?” . i’m not sure if he’s being serious when he says, “here in finland, everyone learns to read.”
talking about books, i see that dulwichmum is going to be available in hard copy. i wonder if there’ll be an mp3 audio version?
Filed under: Finland, Helsinki, books, films | Leave a Comment
sisu
An old friend who’s into poetry, hearing i was going through a bad time sent me one by lavinia greenlaw
To persevere in hope of summer.
To adapt to its broken promise.
To love winter.
To sleep.
To love winter.
To adapt to its broken promise.
To perservere in hope of summer.
Filed under: Finland, finnish, poetry | Leave a Comment
The Wobbly Bridge
I once went for three nights without sleeping at all. i wish i could say that i was having such a great time i didn’t want to go to bed but that’s not true. i just lay in bed hour after hour after hour. my thoughts raced like an electric train.
Ive beenawake since round about 4 which isnt too bad. listened to the world service but it was too interesting so i turned it off. i just kept going over what happened last night. trying to remember and trying to make sense of what happened.
it was at 20:33 that the text came. Tiina. she wasn’t even in bloomsbury but at the tate modern. would i like to come and meet her and her friend. theyd be there for another half an hour. i thought about leaping in a taxi but instead i caught the first bus down to waterloo bridge, and went down the stairs in the south bank centre. i saw a RV1 and ran for it. the driver saw me but made a funny sign and drove on and into the distance.
when if got out of the lift on the 7th floor of the building, i was almost out of breath. i looked for them and
what an amazing view you get from the bar there. i can’t believe i never knew about it before. the lights had come on across the city skyline. but the best view i’m sorry to say was of teena bent over the shelf that ran along the window side, a crisp white shirt just covering the top of her jeans, as she stared along the millenium bridge towards the curvaceous dome of st pauls.
her friend, Monna spotted me first and tapped her on the shoulder then tiina turned slowly around. then flicking her head clockwise so that her long hair fell over the side of her face, covering her mouth.
she kissed me on both cheeks. mona shook my hand and said she had to go. she lives in london, married to an englishman. after she had left we ordered another bottle of wine, pinot grigio, her choice not mine,
[one second, my brother’s trying to skype me]
where was i? I was in the bar at tate modern and i feel like I’m a teenager – our of my depth with a girl who knows so much more than me and looks like shes in another league. I try to hold my own but am constantly distracted by the sound of birdsong.
Its tiina’s ringtone. she looks at her nokia N95 she frowns and kills the call. they keep calling and the calls get more frequent. i don’t know who they are from but one time she says the name “Perkelay” angrily and presses the button so hard the phone slips from her hand. I bend down and pick it up for her. She says, you’re such a gentleman.
This is the conversation that i’ve been running through my head for the last four hours:
I said: you wouldn’t say that if you knew me
she said: i would like to. i would like to know you better. what are you really like?
– i am like a fish that hates water (why did i say that? did I say that?)
– thats a pity. i am an aquarius. but really i prefer to bring fire better than water. i am sure that pekka has told you that…but you mustn’t believe what pekka says about me. i am not such a bad person.
she stared straight at me and there was a silent connecting. like when your laptop picks up the signal of a wireless network. behind her a couple clinked champagne glasses.
i tried to think what to say but tiina parted her lips as if she was going to speak. but no words came for seconds and seconds and seconds…
– i think i should go home
– yes its late, i said
– i think you should take me. i’m a little drunk and you promised jorma to look after me.
again the bird. this time she answered and at the same time her face changed. she was talking angrily in finnish…not that i could understand a word that she said…but i saw her eyes, green, so very very green, glimmered, somehow made me think of the sweat on my hands. I left to go to the gents.
when i got back she wasn’t there. i waited for ten minutes until i picked the bar receipt. on the back she had written
>> This bird has flown.
i went to a pub i know round the corner. before the bell went for last orders, i’d downed three whiskeys. i wanted to talk someone about what happened but who? i started wondering, what would East say?
Filed under: East of Dulwich, translation | 2 Comments
through a glass darkly
i can see the guture. and it is not going to thank me for that last whisky i just drunk
wot a night- pekka if your reeding this im sorry you were rithg all along about
about everything. that is one gucked up woman sorry i gotta go
Filed under: Alcohol, disillusion | Leave a Comment
I feel im in a little too deep. If pekka has found out about this blog, then maybe jorma has too. And how about tiina, is she reading this, i texted her to say i didn’t know if i could make it because of work but if i was in the area…
…and somehow this evening, i find myself on the 63 bus and then the 68 all the way talking on the phone to an old schoolfriend about the craziness i’ve got caught up in and now i’m in an internet cafe in bloomsbury.
tiina is probably dining alone in the hotel restaurant right now as i type. so what do i do, go home or text her…??????
something tells me that i’m about to make a decision that i’ll regret for the rest of my life.
and something else tells me that i’m about to make a decision that i’ll be thankful for, for the rest of my life
Filed under: Risk | Leave a Comment
Make mine a double
At about three in the morning woke up from a dream where i was shaving myself in the mirror. My reflection looked back at me and then, bent his raised arm, put his hand under his chin and pulled off a mask. and behind the mask…just me, a reflection of me doing the reflectiony things that reflections do.
I lay awake for half the night, i tried to watch the box but even price-drop tv didn’t send me to sleep. I thought i could try something that used to work when i was a child — reading myself a story. so i did something i used to do when i was a kid. i read myself a story. i picked it off the shelf at random and it was called The Secret Sharer and finally i got back to sleep. Got woken up by my mobile receiving an sms from pekka:
Hei brad
Final warning.
Stay clear
of her
Filed under: Conrad, insomnia, jealousy | 2 Comments
There are weeks when you wish youd stayed in bed…all week. this is one of them.
first of all i get an email from tiina telling me she still wants to meet tomorrow but — she says —
plis (sic) dont say anything to jorma. he is so very jealous –
next i get an email from jorma: he says
>> my wife that you met is coming to London and will be on her own of Friday night.
>> Please would you be so kind so as to look after her for me. I hear that London is no
>> longer such a safe place as before. She can be pleasant company so I hope you will
>> not object to my making such an imposition on our friendship.
Then when I finally get back to work on the LAD project — which i still haven’t finished — the phone rings. It’s The X. X and I split up more than a year ago. Actually we split up two years ago got back together then split up then got back together then split up then got back together — wait a minute is that too many getting back togetherrs?
She tells me that she is having a drink for her birthday on Friday and she’d like me to be there. I say i can’t make it. She says that it’s only her birthday once a year and can’t i cancel whatever i’ve got on. i remind her that she told me not to come to her last two birthdays so why is this one so different. She asks me if i’m seeing a woman. I say yes but its not a date. She hangs up without saying goodbye.
I e-mail Pekka to ask him what to do and get an outofoffice reply. Its in Finnish only and all i can make out is that he’ll be back on “perjantai’
Then to top it all someone launches a denial of service attack on my personal website Then when it comes up again its been hacked into every letter a has been changed to a crossed out @. So I’ve taken it down.
I think i know who is behind this but i dont know who he — could be a she — really is. but they use the name Meadows.
Filed under: customer service, hacking, jealousy | 4 Comments
Putting off putting it off
I’m beginning to not like myself very much. aving failed to complete the LAD project and really p*ssed off one client I decide to put in a bid for another piece of work, this time for a NGO that works in Africa. well, never heard back from the NGO and meanwhile, the LAD work is so late that the firms written to say they might invoke the penalty clause. Can they do this? They never even told me about the penalty clause and — who has time to read contracts???????
(note to self: find a good lawyer. a cheap one. Yeah but, good and cheap rarely go together.)
So I’ve got until 6pm tonight to at least be able to bullsh*t myself through a phone conversation with Scott, yes it’s all on schedule I just ran into some unexpected…blah blah blah. Then if I don’t drink too much tonight I can at least have something to show them Monday morning. If I lose this one, I’m going to have to find a cheaper flat.
And Pekkas no use, he keeps calling me up in the middle of the day to ask me stuff like do i have any cds by john mayalls blues breakers. just because i’m english it doesn’t make me an expert on music.
Better go…
Filed under: contract law, procrastination | 1 Comment
You better watch your step
I get 2 emails from Finland. 1 from Pekka. 1 from Tiina. Pekka’s is mainly about how drunk he got on Mayday. He also says that the reason he told me to stay away from Tiina is that one of his work colleagues met her for a drink or two and Jorma managed to find an excuse to fire him. But he doesn’t blame Jorma for this. Pekka thinks it was all Tiina’s fault and that in the words of a song by the Velvet Underground — pekka’s favourite band — she’s a femme fatale.
Tiinas message is well more straightforward. She says shes working at conference the week after next and couldn’t get a flight back on the Friday — hard to believe — and so shes going to stay over and catch a dawn flight on Saturday. Everyone else will have gone home so would I like to meet for a drink at 7.
I say sure. Why not. Give her my mobile number, hit reply and have a strange feeling like I’ve done something really wrong. Like that time as a kid when I pressed a button in a full freezer only to find out the next day that it was the defrost button.
I think about making up some story about this to put on East of Dulwich but for some reason I just don’t feel in the mood.
Filed under: East of Dulwich, Finland, Velvet Underground, work | Leave a Comment
Ever decreasing circles
Why am i so weak? It’s getting late in more ways than one and I’m not going to have the LAD stuff ready for tomorrow unless I stay up all night that is.
I managed to constuctively waste the entire day doing…i don’t know what…sending and reading personal emails and wondering why looming deadlines seem to make my internal work-processing device slow down. At one time I started moving my books around, trying out a different order. Could it be that i’m running another program in the background (Buggerup 3.1) that uses up loads of system memory.
Or maybe it’s some sort of trojan (selfconsciousness.neu) that keeps me looping, worrying about how the work is going to turn out and maybe whether this worrying is going to make me produce worse work or if the work is going to turn out worse if i don’t worry about it enough…
…when i could be concentrating on just doing it.
Filed under: work | Leave a Comment
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